


What Lies In The Dark

by Kendrene



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Haunted Houses, Homophobic Language, Human Kara Danvers, Rating May Change, Vampire Lena Luthor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-13 08:23:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21491311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: When Ben Lockwood challenges Kara to spend one night alone inside "the Castle", Midvale's most famous haunted spot, she accepts. After all the hauntings are just stories, put out by townsfolk to keep youngsters away from a dangerous place.But are they, really?
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 76
Kudos: 573





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a tad shorter than what I usually write - in my defence I was just having a little fun. There'll be more to it, and the rating is bound to go up to Explicit.
> 
> Enjoy
> 
> \- Dren

This, Kara decided as the old house settled around her with the tired sigh of creaking wood, had been a terrible idea.

She’d known it from the start but Lockwood’s taunts had gotten to her and, no matter how hard Alex tried to dissuade her, she agreed to spend a night inside the abandoned manor the townspeople of Midvale called “The Caste”.

Alone. 

It wasn’t a castle _ really _, having been built sometime in the 1800s but, with the number of slender turrets adorning its sprawling structure, the house definitely looked the part. 

Lionel Luthor, the wealthy man who ordered it constructed, had been one of the most renowned entrepreneurs of his time, but didn’t have much chance to enjoy the luxurious home his money bought him. He’d disappeared, alongside his entire family, shortly after “The Castle” was completed. 

Articles from the Midvale Chronicler’s archives described the terrible fire in which the Luthors had perished with gruesome abundance of detail, even though the family’s remains were never found. Rumors sprouted up around the tragedy as numerous as mushrooms after a rain: some attributed the fire to Lionel himself, while others - far more sinister and wild - blamed a cadre of vampires for the whole affair. 

_ Vampires! _

Kara had to choke a laugh into the palm of her hand when Wynn cautioned her against vampires the day before as they bee-lined to get lunch in the cafeteria. 

The part about the fire was true, at least, signs of the unimaginable heat that had ravaged the property still visible more than two hundred years later. 

The manor had been built inside the dense woods surrounding Midvale, but nothing taller than sparse brush grew close to the house. The ground around it was strange too, brittle and glittery in the red hue of dusk like ground-down glass. 

It hadn’t looked that scary to Kara then - mostly lonesome, and more than a little sad in its abandoned state. 

Of course, _ then _ had been hours before when the sky was still bright enough to see by, and _ now _was the velvet blackness of the night pressing against the windows, most of which had been broken in by the stones tossed by some of the town’s punks. 

People still came here, in large part for petty acts of vandalism, but nobody that she’d heard of ever spent the night. _ The few who tried were never seen again. _ Her mind supplied unhelpfully in Lockwood’s mocking tones. 

Around her, the house groaned again, and she yelped.

“This is bullshit.” Kara reached for the pile of branches she’d gathered on her way to the house and tossed another one in the living room’s stone hearth, feeding the flames. “There’s nothing here.” 

As if to agree, the flames brightened and hissed, affording her a bit more light. 

The manor’s interior had been quite the surprise. Considering the blackened outside walls, and the number of missing windows Kara expected it to be overrun by critters. Instead, the little she had the courage to explore was unexpectedly well preserved. 

She scouted most of the ground floor, but didn’t have the heart to go upstairs. The ample stairwell leading there had been shadowed even at sunset, and what little she could see of the steps appeared warped by age and heat, and eaten by rot in some places. 

In the end, Kara set up the sleeping bag she’d brought along in the manor’s former parlor. The room was the only one she’d found where she could safely start a fire, and it was reasonably close to the front door, in case a hasty retreat was needed. 

Once she was sure the fire was gonna burn for a couple of hours, Kara set an alarm on her phone. It was barely past ten, but she’d already eaten a hole through her small food supply, and staying up any longer would simply wreak havoc on her nerves. 

Sleep overcame her with surprising swiftness: one minute she was staring at the flames through a haze of tears, the heat radiating off them almost too much to bear. The next, she was bolting awake, the fire reduced to glowy embers, the night’s chill seeped deep into her bones despite the goose down sleeping bag. 

Kara couldn’t say what had woken her, but as she rubbed the last traces of sleep from her aching eyes she caught a flash of white near the stairwell. 

“Is anyone there?” She scrambled for her backpack and the flashlight she’d left inside, cursing herself for not having placed it within reach before she’d gone to sleep. “Hello?” 

Feeling supremely stupid, Kara directed the beam of light toward the stairs. Even if there was something in the house with her, it definitely wasn’t going to say hi back before it killed her.

“Hello?” She called again as she edged toward the stairs. _ Something _ thudded on the upper floor and a terrible suspicion wormed its way into Kara’s over-stressed mind. 

She had been told to come to the house alone, but what proof did Lockwood have that she would keep her word, unless he followed her? And, if he had, nothing would stop him from fucking with her. Actually, Kara was pretty sure he would.

“Lockwood,” She growled, aiming the light to the upper landing. ”if it’s you, I swear to God-” 

Nothing. Her phone display, when she dared take her eyes away from the stairs to check it, read 2 a.m. 

_ Fuck _.

Wired as she was, there was no way for Kara to fall asleep again. She retraced her steps and relit the fire, her confidence growing with its warm glow. 

There had been a dream, right before she woke, and the memory of it trickled into her slowly like water dripping into an empty flask. 

A pale woman watching her sleep. An impression of movement upon the stairwell. 

Kara frowned. Could they be one and the same? 

Only one way to find out. 

********

Reaching the upper floor proved easier than Kara had initially thought. She kept to the part of the stairs close to the wall and, even though the wood squealed under her weight once or twice, she made it to the landing without incident. 

Moonlight streamed in from every window, bathing the halls and rooms in silver. There was more than enough light to see by, but Kara clutched the flashlight to her chest and refused to switch it off. 

If nothing else it could double as a bludgeon. 

The passing of time was more apparent on this floor. Leaves carpeted the hardwood in certain rooms - no doubt brought in by past storms - and most windows here were gaping holes that let out into the night. But she could still see grandeur among the debris. 

A library, its walls covered in shelves from floor to ceiling, another hearth - this one so big she could have stood inside it easily - and more. 

Gilded furniture, bronzed mirrors, an entire collection of vases, some of which of a porcelain so thin that the light she carried shone right through them. 

it must have been a splendid home, in its time.

“Oh, it truly was.” 

The voice came from behind her so sudden and unexpected, that it took Kara a few moments to realize she’d heard something other than the forest breathing all around the house. 

All blood draining from her face she stumbled and, in attempting to regain her balance, dropped the flashlight on the floor. It struck the hardwood at an angle, something rattling audibly within, and the slim beam of light that had been her lifeline cut off, plunging her in shadow. 

A faint laugh reached her ears, taunting and soft. 

Kara whirled around, sure that she would find the owner of the voice at her back, ready to strike, but the corridor behind her was empty save from the otherworldly glow of the moon. 

Then, a white form streaked across the hall, vanishing into the library.

Before she could think better of it Kara was running after the shadow, the chill of fear supplanted by bubbling anger. 

It must be one of Lockwood’s stupid friends - Veronica Sinclair perhaps - trying to scare Kara into fleeing before the night was up. 

But it wasn’t Veronica waiting for her in the library. 

Here, moonlight flowed in freely from windows that arched at the top in the style of a gothic cathedral, The inky blackness of night and shadows both was lessened, the scene painted in differing shades of grey.

Except for the apparition’s eyes.

There was something lovely about them, and secrets held within their shimmery green depths. They gleamed in the moonlight, like crystal clear ponds nestled deep within the heart of a thick swath of ferns. 

The rest of her was lovely too Kara noticed, her heart throbbing weirdly at the thought. She must be around Kara’s age, or perhaps a little older with hair as dark as her skin was pale. Beautiful and ethereal just the way Kara had seen her in her dreams, and yet utterly real. 

She took a careful step back, and wished she had recovered the flashlight instead of rushing into the chase.

“What are you? A ghost?” Kara’s voice was shaking and her cheeks heated up in shame. 

“A spirit? Me?” The girl looked amused. “Could a spirit do..._ this _?” 

She was nose to nose with Kara in a blur and, raising the flashlight that was now somehow in her possession she flicked it on, bathing them in artificial light.

“** _Boo_ **!”

“Christ!” 

As every hair on her body tried to stand on edge Kara startled back and, this time, did lose her balance. 

“Oh no.” The girl continued, twisting the flashlight between delicate fingers until it snapped. “I’m something far worse…” 

She grinned and her smile was a dash of dangerous scarlet in the half-light. 

Kara glimpsed fangs. 

********

"Far worse." 

The girl bore down on her, pinning her in place with ease despite Kara’s attempts to squirm away. 

This close, her beauty was painfully apparent. There was an inner glow to her unmarked skin, like that of alabaster, and Kara found herself aching to touch the fine, aristocratic lines of her face. 

The girl - the vampire - blinked slowly and pulled back with a frown. 

“Well? Aren’t you terrified?” A strange note had entered her voice. “People usually try to run, right about now.” For all that she was acting disappointed, her green eyes were big and vulnerable. Gold flecked her verdant irises, Kara noted, burning bright in the semi-darkness as if the vampire had caught fire on the inside. 

In that moment, she looked to Kara just as lonesome as the house she haunted. 

And she was terrified, thank you very much. At least in part. But she could scarcely explain the faint prickling of her skin, or the heat that had gathered in her belly to this creature - not when she didn’t understand these things herself. 

Kara had been aware of her attraction to girls since… well, since she could remember, honestly. She liked boys too, and even dated James Olsen when she was a sophomore. He was nice and never pressed her for more than she would give, but in the end they’d decided they worked better as friends. 

But girls… To Kara, girls were an enigma wrapped in mystery. She was desperately in love with most of the girls at her school, but too shy to interact. It was easier to write about them in the diaries she kept piled under her bed, thousands of words hoarded the greedy way a dragon would hoard gold. 

Sam had been the one she’d loved the most, the one she’d thought she would finally have the courage to come out to. But she had not, and Sam had moved away - heavy with child. 

Anyway, coming out was not something one did lightly in a small town like Midvale. Even Alex, who already knew she was going to move away at the end of the school year said nothing, despite having a girlfriend. 

And then, there were Lockwood and his cliqué. 

_ So, Danvers, are you gonna do it or not? You’re not a fag like Schott here, right? _

_ I’m not- He’s not- _

Yeah, there was a good reason why Midvale High didn’t even have a support group. 

“Vampire got your tongue, darling?” 

Cold lips grazed hers and Kara whimpered. She expected the reek of an open tomb to wash over her face, or perhaps the copper-sweet smell of blood, but the vampire’s breath - which was her own exhale, stolen and repurposed in a parody of life - tasted faintly of herbs. 

Eyes fluttering shut against her will, Kara leaned forward, in search of what she wasn’t sure. She was keenly aware of the blood rushing to her face and it should be impossible - no, illegal - to flush so hard, but there she was. 

Anticipating the agony of the bite that was sure to come, her entire body stiffened but, instead, her gasping mouth met another, for a fuller kiss. 

A small sound left her throat and she surged into the vampire’s mouth, lips pressing and seeking, the frustration she’d accumulated in years of longing finally finding its release. 

The vampire’s mouth was firm and shockingly warm against her own and her hands were molded to Kara’s shaking frame. One grasping her by a shoulder and the other softly curved around the back of her head. 

Time ceased to have meaning, and only the fire building inside her lungs reminded Kara that - unlike the vampire - she was still alive and needed air. 

She opened her mouth to gasp, and the nameless girl, taking the gesture as an implicit invite, slipped her tongue inside. 

The moment their tongues touched, the oxygen inside Kara’s chest was replaced by electricity. The wet heat of the kiss stirred something other low inside her belly, something tense and heavy - a coil that seemed to gather all the conflicting currents coursing through her veins. 

This was a dream, Kara convinced herself even as sharp fangs scraped her lower lip, drawing a drop of blood, and any moment now she’d wake up in her sleeping bag on the ground floor.

God, she didn’t want to. 

“_ KARA _! Kara where the hell are you?”

Alex’s voice drifted up from below, and Kara’s eyes snapped open. 

“Kara…” The vampire murmured against her cheek, ill-disguised disappointment roughening her voice. “What a pretty name.” 

She started to rise but, before she had gone one step, Kara plucked at her frayed sleeve and stopped her in her tracks. 

“Wait! What’s your name?” She burned with the need to know.

“Lena. My name is Lena.” 

And, just like that, she was gone.

********

“Kara!” 

Alex stormed into the library followed by James and Winn. Each of them had brought a flashlight and Kara had to throw an arm over her eyes, momentarily blinded. 

“What happened? Are you hurt?” 

“No.” Kara accepted her sister’s hand and clambered to her feet. Cobwebs she had failed to notice before clung to her pants. “I fell and lost my flashlight, but I’m fine.” 

Irritation edged her words and she took a steadying breath, abashed at her own anger. Alex had come in search of her out of fear - she couldn’t possibly have known…

Known _ what _? That Kara had been about to let a vampire rail her? 

“You shouldn’t have done this.” Winn interjected, playing a beam of light over what was left of Kara’s gear. “Not on my account. I’m not a - what Lockwood said.” 

“Which would be alright, by the way.” Kara replied, with perhaps more vehemence that was necessary. “To be gay, I mean.” She stammered, shuffling her feet under their combined stares. 

An awkward silence followed, then Winn grinned and clapped her shoulder. 

“Who cares about what Lockwood thinks, anyway? You won, you know? It’s almost dawn.” 

It was true. Outside, night was receding, the edges of the sky already dressed in gauzy pink. 

“I...won?” 

“Yes.” Alex nodded sternly. “But no more of this kind of wages, you hear me?” Plastic from Kara’s ruined flashlight crunched under her foot, and her mouth thinned further. “You could have seriously hurt yourself! What if you’d twisted an ankle, uh? Or broken your leg?” 

“You’d have come to the rescue?” 

“Smartass.” 

Their laughter filled the halls with echoes but, to Kara, it didn’t feel out of place. The house soaked the noise in, and the melancholy breathing through its walls, which had weighted against her temples like a headache, decreased. 

They were halfway back to Midvale - where Kelly and Nia waited them to grab some breakfast - when James halted, his dark eyes searching Kara’s face.

“I meant to ask - is the house really haunted like the rumors say? Did you find anything?” 

Kara didn’t immediately reply. Her gaze roamed the silent woods around them and settled on the manor’s dark shape, still somewhat visible in the distance. 

“No.” Blood trickled from the nick on her lip and into her mouth, calling out the lie. “I found nothing at all.” 


	2. What Waits In The Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intrigued by her encounter with Lena, Kara goes digging for answers (and gets in trouble in the process)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More tropes! Lena's POV! Timely rescues! Have fun (hopefully)
> 
> \- Dren

Lena drifted aimlessly from room to room like the ghost Kara had accused her of being. 

After the girl and her friends had left the manor, Lena had emerged from one of the secret passages leading underground and retrieved a fragment of the flashlight Kara had carried. 

It was almost dawn by then, curls of grey false light filtering through the densely packed trees, and she hadn’t dared to linger longer than was necessary. Contrary to what the legends about her kind said, the sun wasn’t a concern, but the last thing she needed was more people poking around the property to chase rumors. 

It had happened before, the fires that had destroyed life as Lena knew it barely grown cold. Looters from nearby towns visited the manor, hoping to strip it of what riches the flames had not devoured, and when they realized the piles of gold they had envisioned would be waiting for their greed-guided hands were nowhere to be found, they had turned their fury on the house. 

The manor, already badly wounded by the fire, had received a crippling blow. Doors were smashed to splinters, the pages of the books that had somehow survived the raging inferno were ripped from their spines or scrawled over with obscenities. In their rage, the looters had taken hammers and other bludgeoning instruments to the italian marble of the fireplace mantle and cracked it open, powdering the pieces into a dust as fine as the ashes that carpeted the floors. 

Newly reborn, Lena had been too weak to stop them. She’d huddled in the dark of a hidden stairwell, ear pressed to the wall and cried her grief in silence. 

The vases and gilded mirrors, the musty tomes lining the library walls - everything Kara had mistaken for past grandeur in her inexperience was nothing more than pale imitation. Lena had stolen most of it over the years, knick-knacks and copies of more precious items that would not be missed. The truly valuable objects in her extensive collection were stored beneath the house, in the cavernous halls that had been Lionel Luthor’s inner sanctum. 

Underneath the ground there was no dust. No decay. The stone-clad halls looked the way they had in her father’s time, seemingly oblivious to the fact that more than a century had gone by since his death. His maps and the navigation instruments from his years in the Navy as a young ensign and then captain still adorned what had been his hidden study and the adjacent library, while not as grandiose as the one above Lena’s head, held the entirety of his collection of esoteric books. Lionel had been a man of many interests, and every room reflected that. Each contained a part of his extensive collection from precious stones to taxidermy specimens, from weapons and armor to mining charts and instruments - which had been the industry on which her father had built most of their fortune. 

A cabinet of curiosities that spanned the entirety of the space and to which Lena had contributed, or tapped into whenever the changing times called for money.

It was in the underground library that Lena had finally settled after her encounter with Kara, the piece of plastic from the flashlight held in a tight fist like a talisman. 

In the light of a lone gas lamp - she could scarcely abide the open flames of candles - Lena had turned it over in her hand and tried to restore order to her thoughts. 

Human blood was a luxury she only rarely allowed herself to savor, all too aware that overindulgence paved the road to discovery and destruction. But her lips still tingled from the kiss she and Kara had shared, and the ghost-taste of the lone drop of lifeblood she’d drawn coated her tongue. 

It had awakened something inside her, a desire for companionship Lena hadn’t felt since the early days of her transformation. The fact that the girl had caught more than a glimpse of her true nature should worry her, but right as she had gasped for breath against Lena’s mouth, her blue eyes had filled with a yearning as deep as what Lena felt now. 

She had an inkling that Kara would keep their meeting secret. 

“Kara.” Her whisper cut through the unmoving air and Lena licked her lips, as though she was tasting the sound itself. “Kara.” 

Perhaps the girl’s curiosity would have the best of her and she’d come back.

It was a foolish thought. A dangerous one too, but Lena couldn’t help herself. 

*********

The days after what Alex had dabbed “her foolish excursion” were pure torture. 

At school things were quiet - far too much for Kara’s liking. She’d expected some form of retaliation from Lockwood and his friends, but so far, he’d contented himself with scowling from across the quad, or roughly pushing past her whenever they crossed paths in between classes. 

Kara found the change of strategy unnerving. 

Even though Lockwood took up a sizeable portion of her thoughts, the majority of her mind was busy analyzing what had happened during the night she’d spent inside “the Castle”. 

Logic told her she’d imagined it all - Winn’s stories must have taken deeper root than she’d thought, and the darkness of the woods had done the rest. Whenever the voice of reason grew too loud, Kara dug a hand inside her pocket, fingers closing around the piece of hard plastic from the flashlight she’d recovered before Alex dragged her outside of the manor. She’d taken to carrying it around wherever she went - like a little charm. Proof that what she’d seen was not a simple nightmare but the truth.

Should her sister find out, she’d never hear the end of it. 

As it was, Kara had the feeling that Alex was watching her closely already, as though afraid she’d run back into the woods at the first chance. 

And - truthfully - she might. 

The girl from the manor stalked her dreams and shadowed every waking moment. To conjure her face or hear her voice, all that Kara had to do was close her eyes. She was so distracted by the mystery of her that she earned herself detention for drifting off during Mrs. Grant’s chem class - not once, but twice in the same week. 

After that, her sister’s concern grew suffocating. 

It didn’t help matters that, one Sunday afternoon, Alex had caught her sketching Lena. 

“Wow.” Alex sneaked up behind her in the quiet way she had, which never failed to make Kara jump out of her skin. “I didn’t know you had a vampire fetish.” 

“I don’t-! It’s not-!” Kara spattered, cradling the open sketchbook to her chest. “You know I don’t like it when you do that!” 

“Do what?” Alex asked, faux innocent, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of her jeans as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. A grin was stuck to her face, but above it her eyes were serious. 

“Come up behind me all silent-like when I’m drawing. I told you before I don’t like it.” 

“Sorry.” It was clear from her tone that Alex didn’t mean it. “I need to talk to you, though.” 

“About?” 

“About…” With a sigh, Alex sat down on Kara’s unmade bed. She plucked at the blanket with nervous fingers and shuffled her feet, the silence between them stretching until Kara’s jaw was about to break from all the clenching. “You haven’t been yourself lately. I guess I’m just worried. You know I’m going to move out after I graduate and I won’t be able to-” 

“Watch over me, I know.” 

Alex opened her mouth again, but Kara cut her off before she could speak. She’d heard it all before, and while she understood Alex’s protective urges, it irked her to be treated like a baby still. She could take care of herself. Heck, she’d just spent an entire night in a place people talked about only in whispers. 

“I’ve been distracted,” she admitted in the end. “This thing with Lockwood… It’s got me a bit on edge, honestly.” It was the truth, if just one part of it. “I keep waiting for him to  _ do  _ something. Did you know people had bets on me not making it through to dawn? Winn told me Lockwood lost a couple hundred bucks on it.  _ A couple hundred _ , Alex, and I’m sure that he’s going to make me pay for it, sooner or later.”

It wouldn’t be about the money either. The Lockwood’s were rich and Ben Lockwood went to Midvale High only because he’d been expelled from every private school his father ever sent him to. A few hundred dollars weren’t a big deal to him - he didn’t need to work a part-time job like the rest of them for pocket money - but Kara’s success had put his reign of terror in question. 

He’d get back at her, somehow, and there was little either of them could do to about it. 

“I won’t hide.” Kara said, voice low and firm. “What am I supposed to do, anyway? Skip school?” 

Alex sighed.

“Just be careful, okay? Lay low or something. And promise me, no more excursions into the woods.” 

“I promise.” Kara lied. 

Once Alex had left, Kara spent some time flipping through the sketchbook. Alex had given it to her the previous year - a spur of the moment gift, she’d said - and Kara loved the soft leather of the cover, the heavy, rough texture of the cream-colored charcoal paper within. Thus far she’d saved it, feeling that something so fine was to be kept for her best works, but her encounter in the abandoned house had warranted something special. 

She hadn’t realized how often she’d been drawing Lena until Alex’s offhand comment, and maybe her sister had a point. She counted more than a dozen sketches: Lena, flowing toward her in the big library. Her face illuminated by the flashlight moments before she’d shattered it. And again, as she rounded a corner, daring Kara to follow. And again, the two of them kissing this time, Lena’s fangs flashing against her lower lip - thank fuck Alex hadn’t seen that one.

The sketch she had been working on before Alex interrupted her was a portrait. Lena laughing, her fangs bare but not in threat, eyes crinkling with mirth. Kara rarely used color in her drawings, but for this one she had made an exception, trying to capture the shifting hues of the vampire’s eyes. 

They stared back at her from the page, green and deep and full of secrets. 

Three more weeks went by before Kara found her way back into the woods. By that time, she had filled another sketchbook with her drawings and snow covered the ground.

*********

Kara paused, breath misting the air in front of her face. 

It had taken her a couple of hours to admit it, but she was well and truly lost. 

A gravel road, broad enough to let a carriage pass through the woods with ease, had once upon a time connected the Luthor residence to Midvale. Nowadays, only a narrow path remained - the one she’d followed the first time she’d ventured into these parts - which was now hidden under several inches of fresh snow. 

Armed with a map of the region and a compass, Kara had thought she’d be able to find her way regardless, but halfway to her destination more snow had begun to fall, and the light had quickly dwindled. 

“Why,” she huffed, clambering atop a fallen tree trunk for a better view, “why did they have to build their stupid house in the middle of nowhere?” 

But of course, Kara knew why.

Her new obsession had brought Kara to spend hours inside the town’s only public library. The truth, or what she could glean of it, was buried deep in the town’s archives. In the yellowed documents, there was talk of esoteric rituals conducted on the manor’s grounds, and sightings of horned figures were reported within the mines his money had reopened. Kara had read the accounts avidly, until her eyes burned from the dust, and then she had dug deeper. Unable to tear herself away. Utterly fascinated by the rise and fall of Lionel Luthor and his family.

Their family tree, Kara stumbled upon by chance while looking for details on the fire - a folded piece of paper, frayed at the edges that had fallen from within a stack of daguerreotypes. The librarian, Jess, had begrudgingly set those out for her on a nearby table alongside a pair of gloves, a stern look of warning on her face. 

She’d picked it up with trembling fingers, and scanned it fever-eyed until she found Lionel Luthor’s name. Underneath it there were two more - Lex and Lena Luthor. 

Lena Luthor.

Without thinking, eyes rounded in shock, Kara stuffed the piece of evidence in a pocket and fled the library. Something like an electric charge had coursed through her body then, and the same sort of warmth dispelled the chill around her now as she patted the front of her down jacket. 

Within an inside pocket, the paper she’d stolen from the archives crackled softly.

A flurry of snowflakes stung her cheeks and Kara gasped, brought back to the present. The sky above her head had darkened further, clouds heavy with more snow ammassing to the north. 

While she watched they rolled in, pushed forward by gusts of bitter wind, and set about devouring the last scraps of daylight. 

Kara sighed and rooted around in her backpack for her cell phone. Inwardly, she bid farewell to game nights at Winn’s house - after this, Alex would make sure their parents grounded her indefinitely. 

She pushed aside her food supplies and the thermos of hot tea she’d have to ration until rescue arrived, grimacing when her gloved fingers brushed the sketchbooks she’d been foolish enough to bring along. Kara had hoped to show them… she didn’t know what she had hoped to do with them exactly, but although she could ill afford the added weight, there was no way she’d leave them in the forest. 

A heavy backpack, it turned out, was the least of Kara’s worries. Her cell phone battery was dead - drained by the cold, maybe. 

“Fuck. Me.” 

The wind picked up, kicking what leaves were to stubborn to fall to the ground into a continuous rustling, rushing whisper. Bare branches swayed and creaked, bent this way and that by the currents. They rubbed together with a sound that reminded Kara of dry laughter. 

She hopped off the tree trunk and tugged at the scarf around her neck until her face was completely shadowed by the wool. 

The day ended, in a sudden sort of way, as she did so. There was no last glimpse of ruddy sunlight through the clouds, no slanting of shadows. Simply, the light winked out, as though a curtain had been pulled across the sky. 

A breath later, the wind died, and Kara became painfully aware of how lonesome, how still, the forest truly was. She had grown up surrounded by these woods, and spent her summers playing in the tamer parts close to town, but the absence of light made everything alien. Threatening. 

And, when light returned, it was an eerie glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

Without realizing Kara had started walking, unsettled by the lack of shadows. She felt naked, overexposed, the flat light bathing her surroundings more blinding than anything else. 

The scarf loosened as she went, and snow drifted into her face. It filled her mouth and nose, it pricked her eyes, pushed in and out of view by unpredictable squalls. Yet, the wind was strangely muted, its whistling buried beneath the roar of her own heart. 

The snow came thickly now, turning the trees into fuzzy, softened silhouettes. No matter where she looked, Kara’s vision was like the static of an analog video signal. A random pattern of black and white dots her brain could not resolve into an image. 

A peculiar warmth seeped into her bones, and Kara halted in her tracks. She had read something about it being a bad sign when one was caught in freezing temperatures, but her thoughts were forming with difficulty, as though she wading through molasses, and she could not recall the details. 

She shrugged and trudged on, unzipping her coat when the heat became unbearable. If she couldn’t remember it, it mustn’t be important. 

Before long, the warmth was joined by tiredness; it tugged at her limbs and slowed her steps to a drunken stumble. 

When a half-hidden root sent her to her knees, Kara didn’t even notice. 

*********

Lena left the house as the snow began to fall. 

There was an itch beneath her skin, like coals had been banked by a foreign hand between the layers of fat and muscle. A rawness that worsened with each ticking of her father’s pocket watch. For somebody condemned to live as Lena was, time ought to have been meaningless, yet without a heartbeat or the space between each breath, it was the only measurement she had. 

It had taken her the best part of a day to acquiesce to the itch’s demands, but once that was done with, she left the house in minutes. 

She didn’t need a coat, nor sturdy boots and her eyes held perfect vision in the dark. There were wolves deep in the forest, even a bear or two, but they didn’t scare her. They had, when her family had first moved all the way from Boston, as had each sigh of the trees around the house. With the harvest moon for background the branches had appeared as skeletal hands, keen to grab her from her bed. Used to the never ending bustle of the city and its lamp-lined streets, Lena had cried herself to sleep for the first month, scared that one of the bears would somehow break into the house and eat her whole. 

She hadn’t known back then, she couldn’t have, but worse things than a bear were soon to visit. 

Hungrier ones. 

In the years since her rebirth the forest had changed in her mind from enemy to shield. The woods were a perfect hiding place and she passed by her favorite trees sure-footed and unafraid, pressing a hand to their rough bark in greeting. 

The snowstorm had reduced the world to black and white, but that didn’t bother Lena either. She had grown accustomed to seeing things much the same way - a side effect of vampirism. Color could be bought, but the price for it was steep. 

One drop of blood had been enough to discern the hue of Kara’s eyes. More would have revealed the blush Lena had felt heating her cheeks after their kiss. A full cup would bring back color for a day. Lena didn’t dare. She’d crossed paths with others who drank their fill whenever they saw fit, and they were monsters. 

She wasn’t. Not yet. 

She quickened her step, waving her way between the trees. What animals had not sought shelter from the storm hid at her passage, but it wasn’t hunger which prompted Lena forward. At least, not the kind that they could sate. 

Lena walked, and still the itch grew worse. She would have peeled the skin off of her bones if she’d thought that it may help, but instead, she dug her nails into her palms and left crescents on her flesh. No blood welled there - she hadn’t fed in weeks. 

The itch vanished abruptly, and Lena stopped with it, jaws working around a gasp that expanded her chest and left it aching. 

She had been so engrossed in the feeling of her crawling skin she’d failed to notice that the sky had cleared. The clouds had parted and the moon shone through their tattered edges, adding its light to the glow of the snow. Temporary hills had formed in certain spots, mounds of snow taller than Lena was. In the places where fir and pine grew close together, the ground was bare and dark with fallen needles. Hadn’t she known the forest like the back of her hand, she could have easily been lost, preternatural senses or no. 

Lena turned slowly in place, soaking in the magic of the moment. She’d been foolish to wish for more than what she had, and the itch had served as a reminder. Let the humans keep close to their fires - the woods were hers. She didn’t need anyone’s company. 

She was about to turn back toward the house when her eyes came across a pool of gathered moonlight. 

It was there that she found Kara. 

**Author's Note:**

> join me[ on Tumblr](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/) for more gay nonsense!
> 
> [or find me on TWITTER](https://twitter.com/Kendrene17/)


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